


Squared Away

by TheNinthBow



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 22:48:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNinthBow/pseuds/TheNinthBow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur and Eames meet at basic training.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Squared Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [7daysofpurrfection](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=7daysofpurrfection).



> Written for 7daysofpurrfection for dreamhusbands secret santa! 
> 
> Before I started writing this, I knew nothing about the military, or basic training, or weapons, or anything else related to any and all of the above. Honestly, I still don't know all that much about it. So I apologize for any and all information that's wrong in here. 
> 
> As I was writing this fic, I recognized it was definitely going to have to be placed in a different reality other than our own, simply because hey, I don't know all that much about the military. So this fic is placed in a kind of parallel world with some similar military aspects. As it continues, you'll see where the differences begin.

Arthur is twenty-two when he goes into the army. Three months after he graduates college, the check he’s written to pay his water bill is going to bounce if he sends it in, loan payments are due soon, and the brochure he was handed a week before graduation is sitting on his apartment floor, blaring up at him “loan repayment program.” It’s what he looks at every day as he dresses in khakis and a blue polo, the dress uniform for employees at the fast food joint down the street.

He was always told a college degree was necessary to get a job. Nobody told him that a recession meant finding a job was near impossible anyway.

Arthur had always done well in school. But he hadn’t realized until tenth grade that he would have to pay is own way through college. And that meant he needed scholarships. Maggie and Ann, his two older siblings, managed to get a little money from their parents, but they’d both been stars of the basketball and field hockey teams, respectively. So they’d had scholarships to help pay their way.

Arthur didn’t participate in school sports. He’d taken taekwondo when he was younger, but had dropped out when high school started. And while he got good grades, he didn’t apply himself as well as he could have. His parents worked long hours, and with three younger siblings under the age of ten, and two older siblings away at college, he’d been forced to watch after the younger kids, round up dinner, get them to bed clean and fed and ready to head out the door the next day.

So when tenth grade started, he’d made sure to make time for studying, learned that it was okay to order takeout if there was money for it to save time. Learned that he could make money by tutoring so he could brush up on academic skills and put something appealing to colleges on his activities resume. He took up track and found that not only was he good at it, but that it helped calm his mind.

But college applications came around, and while Arthur was at the top of his class now and at the top of the track competitions, a sports scholarship was out, and the most he got was not even a half ride to TCNJ. And while a scholarship was great, it still left $17,000 a year to pay.

He’d gone anyway. Taken out student loans, signed up for work study, kept on tutoring and taken up a few more jobs when he could.

But still. After college, he had too many loans to pay, an engineering degree that wasn’t as in high a demand as his father said it would be, and he was left in an apartment he could barely pay for.

So Arthur enrolled in the military.

Six years, he promised himself. Six years and he’d get the military to pay half of his loans, would earn enough money to pay the rest of his loans off, maybe earn some skills and a reputation that might get him hired in a decent job after he was done. His parents weren’t happy with the idea, had been anti-war since he could remember, but they hadn’t really been in contact for a few months anyway. The army, Arthur thought, was the perfect solution.

Six years, and he could have the fresh start college never gave him.

**

Arthur doesn’t like a lot of people at the Reception Battalion. It’s a mix of guys, some skinny and pale, some looking like they tried to jack up their muscles just before they got here, a smirk riding their lips the entire time. The bus over is rough, the voice of the drill sergeant rougher as they come to a stop in front of the facility as he yells at them to get off, grab your fucking bag, form lines, hustle hustle hustle. And Arthur doesn’t have time to think, just grabs a duffle bag and shirts in plastic that people tell him to grab, when they tell them to grab it. There are lines that move too fast, drill sergeants yelling out orders, and Arthur tries to stay ahead of it.

He gets fitted for boots, hopes they’re the right size, and shoulders his duffle as he heads for another line. He hears a buzzing at the end of the corridor, and when he leans over to look he glimpses a razor at the end of it. His head is cold and bare when he walks back through the line and to the next one, self-conscious for the first time in years. He rubs a hand over his head, over his ears that he feels are sticking out a bit too much, and in his distraction misses the next ordered call from a drill sergeant at the head of this new line.

Arthur’s heart beats too hard in his chest and he looks around, feeling a sense of panic start to set in, the fast pace of the day and the abrupt change from being free to being ordered around finally catching up to him. The line moves, and people are digging into their packs, and Arthur feels his face getting warm, already feeling the embarrassment at having to admit he missed something, was too distracted to pay attention.

“Inventory.”

Arthur jumps at the voice by his ear. He turns and sees another trainee behind him. He’s just a bit shorter than Arthur and he's already digging into his duffel as well. His gaze is skidding around the room, seemingly taking everything in, and Arthur has no idea what he’s really focusing on until the guy’s gaze suddenly snaps back to Arthur.

“What?”

The guy grins. His teeth are crooked.

“Inventory,” he repeats. “They want to make sure you didn’t lose anything between here and the door.”

Arthur doesn’t know what it is about the guy, but he can’t help but feel like he’s making fun of something just then. And he can’t quite be sure it isn’t him.

“Oh,” Arthur says. "Thanks.” He turns back around and starts rustling in his own duffel, pulls out a sheet of paper he got in one of the first lines. It has a list of items on it, and Arthur starts cataloguing everything.

“That guy,” the kid behind him says, and Arthur looks up to see an arm come out from behind him and point to the graying drill sergeant at the end of the line. “He’s gonna have somebody’s balls by the end of the day.”

Arthur holds back a snort of laughter at that. Mainly because this kid’s the only one that’s talking, and it’s an absurd thing to say when everybody else around them seems like they’re gonna shit their pants in the face of all the fast-paced hustle and directions, or else too good to be talking to anyone who looks that way.

Arthur looks back again, but the grin is off the kid’s face. He looks utterly serious. Until he winks at Arthur. Arthur feels his face go red and he turns away before the kid sees it. The line moves fast from then on, and between barking his inventory at the graying drill sergeant and hoping he’s got everything right, then making sure he doesn’t miss grabbing a basket to go pick up health supplies, Arthur loses sight of the kid.

It’s a large intake of recruits, and a significant number of them won’t make it all the way through basic training, so Arthur doubts he’ll see him again. But maybe that’s a good thing.

**

The rest of the day is a rush until suddenly it’s not. Arthur and half of the other basic trainees are ushered into a large bare room and he sits and waits for instructions. Arthur sees the doctors next, gets a series of shots, and feels another wave of embarrassment wash over him when the eye doctor tells him he can pick up his BCG’s the next day. It almost comes as a relief when he’s released to his quarters later that night. At least he can slow down for a minute and process everything.

But his room is a bare. square concrete cell cramped with four bunkbeds. Being able to pick which bunk he can have doesn’t even come as a relief. Not when Arthur recognizes some of the guys that are sharing his room as a few of the most cocky guys on the line into this place.

“Well, hello again.”

Arthur turns at the familiar voice. It’s the guy from the inventory line. He walks over to Arthur’s side like they’ve spent more than three minutes in each other’s company.

“Top or bottom?”

Arthur freezes. “Excuse me?”

The guy points to the bunk bed Arthur’s standing in front of, expression neutral. Arthur breathes a steadying breath out.

“Whatever,” he mumbles, and he’s already swinging his duffel off his shoulder and letting it thump onto the ground at his feet.

The kid looks at him a moment.

“Okay,” he says. He shrugs a shoulder and with what looks life very little effort tosses his duffel up onto the top bunk. “I don’t mind doing a little climbing.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything to that. Simply jerks his head in a nod and starts to bend down to get the army issued sheets out of his bag and practice making his bed with hospital corners.

“I’m Eames,” the guy says, and Arthur stops when there’s a hand thrust in front of his face.

“Eames?” Arthur can’t stop the tone in his voice, or the eyebrow that lifts when he looks up at the kid. Eames. He regrets it for a moment, but then realizes he might fit in if he has an attitude. Most of the guys he’s met today have one.

But Eames just grins at that. Again.

“Blame the mum and dad,” he says. And Arthur realizes for the first time that the guy has an English accent. It’s subtle, barely noticeable, but it throws him so completely he’s reaching out and taking Eames’s hand before he can think.

“Arthur,” he says.

“Arthur.” Eames nods, his grin getting surprisingly wider. “Nice to meet you.”

When he releases Arthur’s hand, Eames grabs hold of the bed and launches himself up onto the bunk. Then he’s calling out to the other guys in the room, demanding they all exchange names and zodiac signs and whatever else shit information the army demands they reveal and give up in basic training. And Arthur makes his bed to the sound of his roommates exchanging birthplaces and complaints about the drill sergeants and how fuck, the women recruits must be in a different facility. He makes his bed, props himself up again the concrete wall, hidden half in shadow, and listens.

Six years, he tells himself. And he knows what to expect now, for the next day and the day after that.

 **

Except nothing really prepares any of them for basic training. Within the week, the introductory Reception Battalion is over and they start real Basic Training. Everyone’s up by 4:30 every morning, and from there the day moves quickly and the drill sergeants never stop yelling. Arthur’s surprised he can catch up, seems to hear most of the directions yelled out by the drill sergeants. He’s lucky to be one of the men in basic training that's relatively in shape. He still ran even when he couldn’t do track in college, so he has stamina. And his body still remembers the discipline of taekwondo, even though it’s been years since he participated in that. So the physical aspect of it isn’t too hard, except that there’s so much of it and Arthur’s never had to climb ropes and scale walls before, let alone do as many push-ups as he’s been ordered to do.

The mental aspect of it is grueling. The sudden change of having his entire life suddenly scheduled and rigidly monitored is more stressful than he thought it would be. Every second of every day is scrutinized, and he learns to sleep on top of his sheets instead of under them so he doesn’t have to remake them and he can save some time in the morning so he doesn’t fall behind. There’s classroom training on how to read maps, on Army Core Values, on the basic everyday details of army life. Arthur ingests it all, stores it away, which is more than can be said about some of the other trainees. At least in that he has the upperhand.

Arthur mostly keeps to himself. Battle buddies are required, even though everyone calls each other that, regardless that it’s an actual thing. He’ll be paired up with one other trainee for the duration of basic training and they’ll supposedly have each other’s backs, help each other out, and if one screws up, they both get the punishment. Arthur waits it out, thinks someone will find him. And if not, he’ll get one assigned. But surprisingly, no one asks him about it and he’s never assigned one. He realizes one night when he’s finally called up for fire brigade why that’s so.

He has the 11pm shift, and is surprised when as soon as he gets out of bed, Eames drops down from his top bunk and says, “Ready?”

Arthur stops pulling on his jacket. “Ready?”

But Eames just throws him a small smile, grabs his own jacket, and heads for the door.

“Come on, battle buddy.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Arthur mumbles under this breath. But he follows Eames out the door, checks in with the leading drill sergeant, and they start their rounds, wandering the compound and making sure nobody else is up and about and starting trouble.

“We weren’t assigned,” Arthur says twenty minutes into their two hour shift. “As battle buddies.” He wonders for a split second if they were, and he somehow missed it in the rest of the shouted commands and assignments.

Eames makes a dismissive noise as they pass a hallway on their left and he looks down it. “No,” he says. “But I didn’t see you signing up. And figured we got along well enough. It could work.”

“We don’t even talk,” Arthur reminds him.

Eames scoffs. “Who does, here?”

Arthur watches Eames for a long few minutes, seeing for the first time what he looks like when he’s not smirking or throwing a careless grin around.

“You’re English,” he says after another ten minutes of silence. “How’d they let you in the U.S. Army?”

“Ahh,” Eames says, and he really lays the accent on thick here. “Born in New York, actually. Mum and Dad were on a... long business trip. U.S. Citizen through and through.”

“But…”

“But I went back when I was two, to good ol’ England, long enough to pick up a few accents here and there. It’s easier to be English when I’m here. Americans love accents.” He looks at Arthur then, and when he talks next it’s with an impeccable New England accent. “If you’d like I could switch. Not stick out so much?”

Arthur rolls his eyes and looks away.

“Doesn’t matter to me. You’re the one answering the questions.”

“Right-o,” Eames responds, and he’s back to using the English accent again.

He talks inanely about a few things as they patrol the compound. Arthur mostly listens, doesn’t have to respond too much to what Eames has to say. At first, it kind of annoys Arthur, the constant hushed chatter coming from him. But as midnight comes and goes and Arthur finds his mind drifting when there’s silence, he’s glad when Eames's voice suddenly starts up again and he’s going on about how Bennett, the kid in the bunk across from his, needs to get his sleep talking under control if he expects to be any good to the army and keep its secrets in sleep.

“If he’s ever taken prisoner, he needs to know he can’t fall asleep and start rambling on about the troops’ ground plans.”

“Really,” Arthur says. “That’s what you get out of this?”

“Yeah, mate,” Eames says. And he runs his shoulder into Arthur’s as they turn a corner. “You’ve got to think ahead.”

Arthur snorts, pretends like he brushes it off. But as they make their way back to check in and then back to their dorm, Arthur can’t help but think about what Eames said.

Arthur knew that by enrolling in the army, he’d actually _be enrolled in the army_. Which means he’d be a soldier. He’d be carrying a weapon, and go into battle if the need arose, and he’d have to take a life. But he never thought about it until that moment when Eames brought up Bennett and his sleep talking. And how odd it was, and scary, to think that something as simple as sleep talking could compromise somebody’s life.

Arthur throws himself into basic training after that. And oddly enough, the more weapons he holds and the more orders he receives, the more he retreats into himself, finds that if he buries the uncertainty and the sudden fear that struck him that night with Eames, he can run harder, climb faster, remember more information the army feeds him. 

**

Oddly enough, the more Arthur throws himself into training, the easier it is to get along with the other trainees. Sure, most of them still seem too cocky, or too deluded into thinking this is all just another video game. But for the most part, when it comes down to it, the guys kind of have his back, and he finds he’s kind of got theirs.

It first happens when they run a course competition. Arthur can’t help but think of it as a jacked up relay race. Arthur’s with his assigned company and when the whistle sounds for the start, the guys let up a yell and they’re off. Arthur’s body kicks into motion, running on pure instinct. He scales over walls, crabwalks backwards through mud, shouts orders and repeats calls back when he’s required. And he feels something go through his body and hoist him into the action of it. When his team’s at the top of a platform and lowering each other down, he sees trainee 309 start to slip and he lunges forward, hits the wooden deck hard. But as the breath is knocked out of him he feels his hand close around a forearm, and he calls out for his teammates to hustle, to move. And they do. And when it’s his turn to go over the side, hands and shoulders support him and lower him to the ground, safe and unharmed.

Arthur is astonished, caught out of the moment for a split second, and he stands before the next fall—a free fall onto padded ground—and watches the men around him move. Despite where they all came from, or how they can’t seem to get along completely in off hours, when it comes down to it, they’re moving as one unit. Arthur watches them swirl around each other. Most of their clumsiness and uncertainty at the new strict rules and grueling mental and physical labor is gone in the rush of a mission.

“Arthur, clear, clear!”

A voice breaks through Arthur’s momentary lapse, and he feels a hand on his shoulder, tapping him in the sign that all is clear. It’s Eames, his voice ringing again in Arthur’s ear, and without thinking, in utter trust, Arthur tucks his arms up around his face, jumps, and rolls when he hits the ground a moment later.

**

Arthur’s company doesn’t win, but the guys still gather in a circle and jump up and down, yelling out a chant, and Arthur finds his fist in the air alongside theirs and his throat being scraped raw as he tries to shout just as loud as the men next to him.

**

“Could have thought you were one of them.”

Arthur looks up from a letter when he hears Eames.

“What?”

“Today.” Eames plops down onto Arthur’s bed unceremoniously, legs stretching along the blanket. He’s learned to keep his sneakers off of Arthur’s bed by now. Arthur raises an eyebrow at him. “All that cheering and yelling and smiling going on.”

Arthur rolls his eyes and looks back down to the letter. “It’s required,” he says.

Eames chuckles and nudges Arthur’s knee with his calf before stretching his arms behind his head and leaning back to get comfortable.

Arthur’s never noticed Eames get any letters during mail call. Mostly because it’s usually just the two of them heading for the dorms when mail call starts each day. Arthur was surprised when he’d heard his name called first today, even more surprised when he’d seen his sister had sent a letter.

“Anything interesting?” Eames asks.

Arthur shrugs, tosses the letter onto the bed.

“Sister’s getting married,” he says.

Eames makes a whistling sound at that, and scoops up the letter. Arthur can’t tell if he reads it or not, his gaze flits so fast across the page, but he makes a show of it anyway.

“Getting leave to go to the big event?” he asks.

Arthur snorts. “I don’t think so.”

Eames looks up at that, an eyebrow raised slightly. “Fair enough,” he says. He puts the letter back down and stretches again. “It’s kind of a short letter anyway.”

It’s true. Arthur was never close to his older siblings, and despite taking care of his younger ones, the four years away at college didn’t help much when he wasn’t there to keep up an emotional bond with them. He hasn’t talked to them for months even before joining the army, and his parents and their anti-war sentiments will make sure they don’t talk now.  

He shrugs. “At least they told me.” 

“Nice guy she’s marrying?”

“Never met him.”

Eames makes a sound in the back of his throat. “I was never one for rooting for marriage anyway.”

Arthur raises both eyebrows at that, and Eames grins wide enough to show his crooked teeth.

“And why is that?” Arthur can’t resist asking.

“And you see yourself getting married after all this?” Eames responds.

It’s evasive, but Arthur lets him get away with it. “Not really ever saw myself getting married, actually.” He stops there. There’s no DADT anymore, hasn’t been for a while, but Arthur’s never really come out to anyone before. Never found anyone he was really drawn to to actually make that judgment or start anything resembling a relationship. So it hadn’t really mattered.

“Too religious an institution?” Eames asks. And Arthur knows he’s joking around now by his tone.

“Too mainstream and black and white.”

Eames laughs at that, and Arthur sees in the moment before he has to look away a kind of glee enter Eames’s eyes, the way his gaze suddenly widens.

“Arthur, you are anything but counterculture.”

“Really?” Arthur feels something in him go hard then. “And you’d know.”

Eames hums. “Mmm, maybe.” And Arthur can feel the vibration from the sound even across the distance and over the bed between them.

Arthur rolls his eyes and grabs up the letter, looking at it a moment before crumpling it up into a ball and tossing it into the wastepaper bin. He makes it.

“Sure,” he says.

“Oi.” Eames sounds affronted at that, and Arthur almost regrets the turn in conversation when Eames rolls off the bed and stands up. “I’ll prove it.”

He jumps and catches the side of his bunk, supports himself with his strength as his legs dangle in front of Arthur’s face. Arthur hears him scrambling around in his bed sheets, watches his legs work to keep balance, and when Eames makes a sound of triumph and falls back to the ground, Arthur abruptly drops his gaze.

“Here.”

Eames waves a beaten-up deck of cards in front of Arthur’s face.

“How’d you get that in here?”

In downtime, trainees can do mostly whatever they want. There are even a few strategic games occasionally for them to do. But everything’s regulated. And on the Do Not Pack list they’d received before coming to basic training, cards were definitely on that list, alongside dice and dominoes.

“Counterculture,” Eames says, voice going deeper and slightly singsong. Arthur’s glad that Eames chooses that moment to dive back onto the bed and shove him toward the foot of it, because Arthur’s face has heated and it doesn’t help when he feels Eames crowd him in and move him over in the already cramped bunk space.

“You know Texas Hold ‘Em?” Eames asks.

Arthur shakes his head, and glances up to see Eames smirk at him.

“Okay, Arthur. Pay attention.” His voice takes on a barking quality that eerily resembles their drill sergeant from that morning, and by the time Eames has dealt out the deck and started placing down cards, Arthur can’t remember half of the directions for laughing.

**

Not all days are good, though. Arthur’s mostly learned how to deal. Weapons training goes by in a flash. Almost too quickly for Arthur or anyone else to hear what the drill sergeants are saying, process that information, and carry it out. More often than not Arthur feels like the proverbial fish out of water.

“Steady position, control your breathing. Good, steady, slow, trigger squeeze.”

It becomes a mantra he hears in his head even when he’s running in the morning or trying to get to sleep at night. He forces himself into the habit of not firing until all his breath has left his body, so that when the bullet barrels out of the gun, Arthur feels the empty recoil all the way throughout his chest. But after a while he starts disassembling the guns, cleaning them, assembling them again, loading them, all on instinct. He doesn’t necessarily understand what all the steps are yet, but his body is running on instinct and repetition, and he knows his mind will eventually catch up.

Eames is by his side more often than not. Arthur doesn’t remember hearing Eames’s name called with his, but Eames shows up anyway. When Arthur asks him about it, Eames simply repeats “battle buddy” ad nauseum. So Arthur doesn’t question it after a while. Eames isn’t told to move anywhere else, so Arthur assumes he’s missing something and that by his side is where Eames is supposed to be.

The worst day, though, come a few weeks in when the gas masks are handed out.  

“Put your hand over the canister, breath in, and that seals the mask to your face.”

The order comes slightly muffled through the mask that’s covering Arthur’s entire face. He puts his hand up to the mask, covers the intake canister with his hand, breaths in, and when he takes his hand away he has a moment of panic when his next breath in is almost nil. But the drill sergeants are barking more orders, and Arthur has to listen, so he opens his mouth, breathes slow and controlled, and is able to find a rhythm soon enough, even though it feels like his lungs won’t fully fill. They will go into the chamber, take off their masks, give any information that’s asked of them, and then put their helmets on in lieu of the masks. That’s the drill.

A small team is assembled outside a twenty foot square concrete building, and Arthur’s nestled in the middle of the line. Eames stands behind him, and when they’re ordered to formation, Arthur feels his hand drop heavy onto his shoulder and give a light squeeze

“You drop something in the chamber,” the sergeant says, “you will find yourself right back here. Understood?”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant!” The words echo around Arthur’s mask, making it hot and humid with breath.

The sergeant gives the order to move forward, and they move. The building is more of a concrete pen than an anything else. It’s empty inside, the floor is made of dirt, and it dips down in the middle so that there’s a pile of water and other liquids Arthur can’t identify swirling around in the center of it. They all come to a stop when everyone’s entered the room, and Arthur looks around at the trainees on either side of him. When Arthur makes the mistake of looking at Eames’s mask he sees Eames go visibly cross-eyed and give him the “ok” sign. Arthur makes it a point of stepping on his boot in the next line shift.

But that’s the only moment of humor allowed, because in the next moment the door is shut, and then the air goes still and heavy and they’re being ordered to take their masks off.

The reaction is instantaneous. Arthur’s eyes burn and his breath freezes up until it’s forced out in a cough. And that burns even more. He hears the sound of coughing and retching around him, but it’s all background noise to the struggle his own body is going through. Dragging air into his lungs is near impossible, and he’s blind and in pain. Even his face where sweat started forming from the mask is burning.  Somebody starts barking in his ear then, and he straightens up, body reacting before his mind can catch up, and he gets out half the pledge of allegiance before he has to stop and cough and hope his throat and nose don’t burn up. He spits the rest of the words out in broken stanzas, but he does it, recognizes that somewhere in his brain, and somehow manages to hold himself together for the rest of the time. At one point, as he’s struggling to put his helmet on, he feels Eames’s hand grip the back of his jacket, and it’s all he can do to lean back and feel a shoulder connect with his spine.

The trip out of the chamber is a blur. Fresh air doesn’t do anything for a long while, until the coughing lessens and Arthur can open his eyes. He looks around and sees the men around him doubled over, wheezing breath back into their lungs. He looks to his right and Eames is leaning against the concrete building, mucus streaming from his nose.

“Fuck,” he rasps out, and Arthur turns his head and spits onto the ground to look away from his red rimmed eyes.

Arthur cleans his own face off, feels his hands shake slightly as he tries to wipe mucus and tears off his face. He’s one of the first to stand up straight. A moment later Eames comes up and stands by his side. His chest is still heaving as he takes fresh air into his lungs, but he’s steady on his feet.

The drill sergeant calls out for presentation of masks. When Arthur raises his, Eames taps his mask against his like a salute, a cheers.

“Homes! Where is your mask.”       

The sergeant’s words are just as affective as the gas at freezing the air in Arthur’s lungs, and he hears Eames spit out another curse.

“You’re joking,” he rasps, and Arthur feels his fingers bite painfully into the mask before they’re ordered to put it back on.

**

Free time that night is sober. Most of the trainees check their mail in silence, opting to lounge and stick to solitary activities or games that need little to no communication, throats still feeling the phantom burn from the CS gas.

Arthur’s in his dorm again, where he spends most of the free hour they get daily. Thankfully, no one else is there, not even Eames this time, and Arthur uses the time to change clothes again, try to shove the memory of the day out of the compartment of his brain that labels it as an event—emotions and fear thrown in with physical activity—into something else that labels it as purely reactionary. A gathering of experiences and lessons that turn everything into automatic and well thought through plans and reactions.

The door to the room bursts open and Arthur doesn’t turn to look to see who it is.

“Fucking geniuses.”

Eames stomps around the room, muttering to himself as he rifles through his things. Arthur looks over to see him pull out his baby wipes. They’ve already showered, washed all the remains of the CS gas off themselves. But Eames takes another baby wipe and rubs it over his face, like he can’t seem to shake the gas.

“Homes is in the common room telling everyone how bad the gas wasn’t,” he says, scrubbing the wipe even over his scalp. “Like he didn’t drop his bloody mask in the chamber and make us go back in.”

Arthur makes a soft huff of sound, too tired to really respond.  

Eames talks some more about the guys outside, how some are laughing things off and saying it wasn’t so bad, they’d go in there tomorrow too. Arthur finishes getting dressed for bed, deciding to turn in early, and wedges himself onto the foot of his mattress, propping himself up against the wall.

Eames starts changing for bed as well, and Arthur watches. From the neck up Eames is hidden by the top bunk, but Arthur can see the rest. He’s just tired enough that he allows himself the one moment of weakness.

Most of the guys have put on a substantial bit of muscle by now. Even Arthur has noticed his lean runner’s muscle bulking up. He even has significant biceps, and his shirts are starting to fit more snug around his chest. But Eames had muscle even at the beginning. Arthur never saw him struggling with that portion of the physical regime. But what muscle he had is bulked up even more, and Arthur watches the muscles of Eames’s back ripple as he takes off his shirt, chucks it at his laundry bag and misses it by several feet. He looks down for a moment as Eames shucks off his pants, slides into sweats. Then Eames is stomping around the room again, sweats hung low on his hips like usual when he can get away with it. He’s still complaining about the guys outside.

“You knew they’d be like this.” Arthur’s words stop Eames’s tirade that’s been going nonstop in varying volumes since he entered the room. “The gas and the attitude is the least of it all.”

Eames stops moving, gaze snapping up to Arthur for a moment before he shakes his head and stands up straighter. He takes up his package of baby wipes and shoves them back in his duffel, silent now.

“Eames,” Arthur sighs. And he doesn’t know why. Just that Eames’s shoulders are suddenly tense. Arthur’s never seen him like that before. He’s usually the most outgoing of the men in basic training. “Why’d you join if you hate it so much?”

It’s kind of a hypocritical question, but Arthur recognizes that. Recognizes too that he has a reason for being here. And he’s suddenly wondering what Eames’s reason for being here is.

“It was a whim.” Eames’s words are clipped, a bit angry. And Arthur believes him for a moment. Until he sees Eames’s fingers tight around the duffel strap, lingering before Eames tosses the duffel near his laundry bag.

“No one joins on a whim,” Arthur says. “And if they do they probably won’t make it past Reception Battalion.” He pauses. “You made it through with flying colors.”

“Lucky me,” Eames says.

Arthur stays quiet after that. Because he’s never seen Eames like this before. He’s tense, muscles tight as he goes around the room making the last preparations for bed. Eames is usually the one with the easy smile, the start of a conversation that will get any and all of the guys at ease and talking about where they’re from, or what the most absurd part of the day was. Arthur’s never seen this Eames before. Like the easy-going man is suddenly gone, leaving behind someone angry and ready to snap.

“Hey,” Arthur says. And Eames glances over at him briefly from where he’s finally picking up his discarded shirt and putting it properly into his laundry bag. But it’s a fleeting look, and he goes over to his bunk next, pulling at the blankets.

Arthur’s had enough of the attitude, so he leans into the wall and delivers a solid kick to Eames’s thigh.

Eames strikes fast, grabbing Arthur’s ankle before he can withdraw it. His hand is solid and warm on Arthur’s skin, and his eyes go wide for a moment before Eames tugs. Arthur scrapes halfway across the bed, blankets bunching.

“Shit, Eames,” Arthur hisses, and his old training comes back online, and he throws another kick, hooks it behind Eames’s leg. Eames crumples before realizes what Arthur’s doing. The action stops as soon as it began. Eames’s hand is gone from Arthur’s ankle, and Arthur sits up, scoots back before he looks over the side of the bed.

Eames is sprawled on his back, eyes wide when he looks up at Arthur from the floor.

“What the hell was that?” he asks. Arthur thinks he’s going to be mad, his anger boiled over. But instead, he seems more surprised than anything. And maybe a little impressed.

“You were being an asshole.”

Eames mumbles something Arthur can't quite catch. He rolls over and hoists himself up, keeps a weary eye on Arthur. Arthur looks away, down at himself and his bed as he straightens his clothes and his sheets. He doesn’t know why he did that. But at least it snapped Eames out of whatever angry cloud he was in. Even if it seems like he’s going to be giving Arthur a wide birth now.

Regret fills Arthur. But it disappears abruptly when Eames collapses onto Arthur’s bed and Arthur yelps at the elbow that lands in his thigh. He reflexively shoves back, but it’s just show mainly, and Eames sprawls across his bed like usual. Only this time his head is tucked right beside Arthur’s thigh, his body sprawled across the length of the mattress as his legs hang off the bed by Arthur’s pillow. Eames closes his eyes, and Arthur feels his pulse kick against his temples.

“Why’d you join?”

It’s the most casual question, the way Eames asks it. But silence swallows it up, consumes it so that Arthur feels the emptiness around it and how close he and Eames really are in the small bunk.

“Loans,” he answers after a moment. “Shitty apartment, shitty job. They never tell you an expensive degree isn’t worth shit. Doesn’t guarantee a job.”

“So you’re a college man,” Eames says. He cracks open an eye to look at Arthur. “Degree?”

“Engineering.”

Eames watches him for a moment, and Arthur feels like he’s suddenly given something away. “But you wish it was something else.”

Arthur’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. He never told anyone that. Not even in school. He’d thought long and hard about switching degrees halfway through, but he would’ve had to transfer schools and by then it would have meant an extra year he couldn’t afford. So he’d been stuck.

“Architecture.”

Eames makes an interested sound at that. “Frank Lloyd Wright or Christopher Wren, or…” he trails off and Arthur laughs.

“I don’t know,” he says. And he doesn’t. Not completely. Didn’t allow himself to think about it at all once it became an impossibility. “Anything. Everything. Whatever came to mind.”

Eames smiles. It’s the softest smile Arthur’s seen on him yet. And, he realizes suddenly, the most genuine.

“You?” he asks, trying to deflect the questions away from himself.

“Mhm,” Eames hums shortly.

“Mhm what,” Arthur presses.

“Psychology degree.”

Arthur’s not completely surprised by that. Eames is smart. Even though he seems to hide it, or try to. But Eames is staring up at the bottom of the top bunk, expression blank, and Arthur can’t have that.

“Really,” he says. He puts enough doubt and derision in it to have Eames looking at him quickly in surprise and, yes, Arthur sees it, defense. But Arthur’s smiling, and Eames shoves at him. Arthur laughs quietly.

“They can use that here,” he says.

Eames sighs. “So I was told,” he says. He shifts around again, and his head ends up pillowed on Arthur’s thigh.

Arthur’s afraid to talk then. Afraid that anything he says will make Eames pull away or bring back the anger that made him so restless just minutes ago. So instead, he’s quiet, allows Eames to close his eyes and drift.

Arthur would close his eyes as well, try to get some sleep, but he can’t seem to will his eyes shut. Instead, he finds his gaze traveling around Eames’s features. A scar cuts through Eames’s left eyebrow, and when Arthur lets his gaze fall farther down he notices a few more scars across Eames’s shoulder, his chest. Tattoos litter Eames’s skin, as well, but Arthur’s never let himself really look at them before. They’re not precise tattoos, but Arthur’s fascinated by them anyway. A swirl of ink curls around one bicep, and in the middle is a fighting Irishman. His gaze flitters around the ink, and he can’t help but huff out a breath when he finds what looks like a poker chip on the inside of Eames’s right arm.

Eames grunts in question at the sound.

“You spelled ‘Mombasa’ wrong,” he tells Eames. His voice comes out quiet, soft.

Eames’s lips twitch up. “It’s spelled perfectly,” he says. He moves his arm a little so Arthur can see the entirety of the tattoo.

“Have you ever seen a world map before? How did you make it past third grade spelling?”

Eames shakes his head. “A mate of mine’s from around there. Well, his relatives are. Spent a summer there. Had a little too much fun. Got into a little gambling. You can keep track of your chips a little better if you have a little mark on them. No one looks at the spelling of the words.”

Arthur has nothing to say to that. Just stares at the tattoo for a long time. Eames shifts after a bit, his head rolling to the side, and Arthur’s heart starts to pound as Eames nuzzles a little into his hip.

When Arthur looks down at him, Eames’s eyes are closed, his breathing even in a doze even if he isn’t completely asleep. Arthur’s glad, because it’s hard to control his breathing completely, and if Eames moves again he isn’t sure he can control another reaction either.

So Arthur stays silent and still and prays that Eames stays asleep.

After a while, he relaxes, increment by increment. Until he feels himself start to drift too.

The door bursts open again half an hour later, and Arthur is startled from his half doze. His hand is curled around Eames’s shoulder and he removes it quickly, groggy, as the other guys filter into the room. None of them really look at Arthur and Eames; Eames spends most nights sitting on Arthur’s bed in some fashion and they’re used to it now. But Arthur feels jittery, and Eames’s head is still warm on his thigh, against his hip, and Arthur jostles him, trying to wake him.

Eames mumbles something, but seems alert enough when he opens his eyes. He freezes mid stretch when he sees Arthur hovering over him, and Arthur sees something pass through his eyes. But it’s fleeting, too quick to name, and the sound of the other guys grabbing their stuff for bed must hit him a moment later. Because he’s sitting up after another second, stretching his shoulders and standing as casually as if he spends every night dozing off in Arthur’s bed.

Someone says something to Eames, but it’s only about the weapon run they’re making tomorrow, and Eames replies as if everything is normal. He jokes around with the guys, and Arthur is left straightening out his sheets before crawling under them for once and turning to face the wall, blanket tucked up around his chin as he curls in around himself.

He feels the shake of the bunk when Eames pulls himself up, the rustle as he settles down. Somebody turns out the lights. It’s a long time before Arthur can get back to sleep.

**

Training intensifies after that. They get to handle more weapons, and the day they learn how to throw and operate grenades, Arthur feels something in him sink deep inside himself and hide away after that. He feels the ground shake beneath him even after he heads to bed that night, and he wakes up in a panic when he feels the bed shake around midnight. But it’s only Eames, moving restlessly on the top bunk. They handle anti-tank weapons as well, and for the most part Arthur learns quickly, able to process the information, tuck it away for instant reference. They pick up a grenade launcher and that one, Arthur isn’t surprised, is Eames’s favorite. Usually he’s a little sullen, more silent now that they’ve started hardcore weapons training. But he laughs a little when Arthur mentions the launcher.

The days go by quickly, and Arthur notices there are fewer and fewer of them as the weeks progress. Some men don’t pass the weapons tests, some are still struggling along with the physical demands. They head out and learn how the tanks operate, learn how to maneuver inside and outside of one. They head into the woods and learn how land navigation works without GPS and electronics, and Arthur excels at that. Eames, as his battle buddy, navigates the woods with him, and as they walk and do proper sighting and line work and then mark their maps, Arthur finds himself relaxing, smiling a little, and at night he finds he sleeps a little easier, having been out in the woods and away from the noise of gunfire that has up until then been a constant. Those few days spent learning land navigation are a tiny respite. At times it had felt like it was just him and Eames going for a walk through the woods.

Arthur tucks those days deep inside himself, under his ribs so they remain protected and unbroken when the rattle of gunfire and explosions pick up again and eventually spread to those very woods as they learn the next step of field navigation—combat formations in wooded areas—and they spread through the previously peaceful woods with smoke and blanks slicing the air.

**

Stress shooting weeds out the last of the men that won’t make it through basic training. But by then, most of the men have formed a bond, call themselves brothers. And so when they set up for the stress shooting run, they shoulder their thirty-five pound ruck, snap on their twenty-five pound bullet-proof vest, and carry their seven-and-a-half pound M-4 carbine.  

There’s a mile run before they get to the shooting range, and when they start off, things aren’t that bad. Arthur’s used to the weight of his pack and equipment by now, has always found the rhythm of a run soothing both mentally and physically, even when it shifted gears here. But after a bit of time, men start to fall behind. Mostly the shorter ones, whose stride can’t carry them as far as fast as the taller men. Battle buddies reach back and tug at their partners, make sure the troop stays together.

Arthur hears Eames curse right behind him and can’t help but grin despite the growing difficulty of the run.

“Feeling the burn of short legs?” Arthur says, quiet enough that Eames is the only one to hear.

“I’m the same height as you,” Eames says, and he puts on a short burst of speed that has him falling in line with Arthur. He starts to pull ahead a little and Arthur picks up his pace so he’s still slightly in the lead. And it becomes a game, a kind of competition that has Arthur trying to stay one inch ahead of Eames. And he does it.

They’ve been running for a while, are almost at the shooting range when Eames starts to fall behind a bit. Eames has muscle, and Arthur’s seen him beat most of the guys at hand-to-hand combat at the base. But he’s not a runner. And despite what he says, his legs are a bit shorter than Arthur’s.

So when he next falls a short bit behind him, Arthur reaches back and grabs onto the front of Eames vest.

“Hey,” he hears Eames huff, but the swat Eames delivers to Arthur’s arm is weak, more play than anything, and Arthur tugs Eames along, making sure he keeps up.

Arthur and Eames are the first two at the shooting range. Most of the men are out of breath, have trouble shooting. Arthur shoots once, his bullet going a bit off center of the target. The drill sergeant to his left yells at him and Arthur feels his mind go blank. He takes a deep breath, struggles against the need to let the air out now, now, and slowly releases it, and when its gone, he holds the breath there, nothing in his body but himself and the run still pounding in his veins, and pulls the trigger. The bullet hits dead center.

**

That night the company is still resting up, still tired from the weighted run. Eames finds Arthur in their room, stretching his muscles out.

“You’re secretly a masochist, aren’t you,” Eames says.

Arthur looks up from where he’s seated on the floor, stretched over his right leg.

“Are you serious right now?”

“How can that be comfortable?” Eames waves a hand at Arthur, and to prove a point, Arthur bends an inch closer to his knee. Eames makes a pained noise, and Arthur smirks, continuing to stretch.

“It actually helps,” Arthur says. “Believe it or not.”

“How? By numbing your body with pain? I can barely walk right now, let alone contort my body like you’re doing at the moment.”

Arthur shakes his head and switches sides.

“It only hurts for a moment,” he says.

Eames turns away from him and mumbles something Arthur swears is “that’s what he said.” But…

“What?”

“Nothing,” Eames says. He reaches up onto his bunk for a sleep shirt, and Arthur watches as he groans and stretches his shoulders above his head.

“How is stretching your arms any different than stretching your legs?” Arthur asks, oddly affronted.

“Arm stretching is natural,” Eames says, tone lofty as he arches his back. “You do it every morning when you wake up, and—”

“Bull,” Arthur interrupts. “Get the fuck down here.”

“Excuse me?”

Eames turns to Arthur then, an eyebrow lifted but expression serious otherwise, and Arthur shakes his head. He reaches forward, as much as his flexibility and new muscle will allow, but he manages to grab Eames’s leg, just behind his knee, and pulls. Eames wobbles for a moment, but manages to fall somewhat gracefully to the ground.

“What the bloody hell, Arthur,” Eames snaps. But Arthur’s tired and sore and still feeling slightly high from the run earlier and the endorphins of pushing his body to the extreme. So he throws caution to the wind and grabs Eames’s calves, scoots back until Eames’s legs are extended in front of him.

“Bend.” It’s a demand, spoken in the voice Arthur uses on the training fields now. The one people are surprisingly quick to obey.

Eames, it seems, is the only exception. He stares at Arthur a moment before he says, “Did you really just say that to me?”

“Do it before I have to repeat myself.”

“Arthur.” Eames sounds flabbergasted and delighted all at once, like he’s never seen this side of Arthur before but likes very much what he sees. It sends a bolt of something hot shooting through Arthur’s gut, and he shakes Eames’s legs once, distracting himself before the heat can grow and show on his face.

“Do you need me to repeat it, Mr. Eames?”

“I wish you would, darling.” But Eames is bending at the waist, arms extended in front of him in a comic impression of what kids looked like back in eighth grade as they tried to slack their way through the physical education tests.

It’s funny, makes Arthur laugh, distracts him a bit from the hot flush that shoots through his body at the word “darling” on Eames’s tongue.

“Don’t call me that,” he tells Eames, but he’s holding back a smile at Eames’s antics as he says it.

“Darling,” Eames says. It’s a purr in the back of his throat, vowels rounded and soft. Arthur doesn’t say anything after that, something going off in his head too much for him to respond. He just grabs Eames hands and pulls him farther into the stretch until Eames is huffing a breath at him.

“Now spread,” he tells Eames after a moment, and Eames is startled enough that he doesn’t verbally respond. His gaze darts up to Arthur from where it’s been trained on his feet this entire time. Something like shock is in his gaze, and something else too that makes Arthur’s face go warm. 

But Arthur’s feeling bold tonight, doesn’t exactly know why. It could be that basic training is more than two-thirds done, or that their entire company made it through training that day, that Arthur and Eames had been the lead in the exercise, that Arthur feels a little buoyed up under the unexpected endearments, even if they were a joke and British and therefore not really terms of endearment at all. But either way, Arthur shoves Eames’s feet apart with his knees, keeps hold of Eames’s hands in his own and pulls him over each leg in turn. Eames grunts, breathes through the stretch when Arthur reminds him it’s a necessity that he take air into his lungs.

When Arthur releases him, Eames sits back, wiggles his legs a little.

“That better work,” Eames says. “I better feel like a new man tomorrow.”

“Or what?” Arthur pushes.

“Or your cover’s blown.”

Arthur’s grin is lopsided, he can feel it. “I don’t exactly have a cover I’m aware of,” he says. Tone slightly self-deprecating.

“Oh, you have one, Arthur. You just don’t know it.”

Arthur stares at him for a long moment. Eames is still breathing hard from the stretching, breathing into the pain of sore muscles. His hand is kneading at his left thigh muscle, and Arthur swallows, keeps his eyes firmly on Eames’s face. It’s why he notices Eames’s gaze flicker to him once, twice, before finally gaining a bit of courage and staying. Eames has never had trouble looking at Arthur before.

“As what?” he says. And he’s aware it’s a kind of challenge. Doesn’t mean it to be. But something’s different suddenly, and Arthur can’t be bothered enough to care how or why. Just that today something seemed to click into place for him, and right here, now, Eames is joking with him, being open, and he just wants to continue riding that high.

Eames looks like he’s about to say something. But his gaze flickers down, just for a moment, and his expression changes, goes a little more guarded. “As a proper twat,” he says.

Something in Arthur’s stomach drops, but he snorts through his disappointment, not even sure what he has to be disappointed over. He shoves at Eames’s leg and stands.

“That coming from you,” he retorts. He grabs his toothbrush, heads to the latrine for his nightly ritual. It takes him only a few minutes now, but when he comes back Eames is still sprawled on the floor. He looks up, eyes wide and seemingly startled when Arthur comes back in the room, as if Arthur interrupted him at something. 

“Get up,” Arthur says. “I want to go to bed.”

“You can walk around me,” Eames says matter of fact. “And besides, I can’t. I think you broke me.”

“Broke you…”

“Yes. My calf muscle has snapped and I don’t even know how my thigh is still functioning right now.”

“That doesn’t even make sense, Eames.”

“Well I still can’t move, so I guess it doesn’t have to make sense.”

Arthur rolls his eyes, cant help it. He steps over Eames to store away his toothbrush.

“I don’t know how I’m going to make it to the top bunk tonight,” Eames is saying. “And it’s all your fault. I—” He stops abruptly when Arthur turns and walks over to him, stopping just short of stepping on his thighs. He’s standing between Eames’s legs, so that when he reaches down and grabs Eames’s shirt in his fists, Eames has to scramble around him to get his feet under him so he can stand.

“Arthur,” Eames starts, but he stops again when Arthur moves him over to their bunk, pushes him just gentle enough into the metal pole of the bunk bed.

“There,” Arthur says. “That wasn’t too difficult, was it.”

Eames shakes his head, gaze briefly flickering down to Arthur’s hands fisted in his shirt in a replay of his grip on his vest earlier on the stress run.

“No,” he says. His voice catches on the word. It’s a subtle sound, so quiet Arthur almost misses it. But he doesn’t miss the way Eames’s gaze flicks down, lingers for only a moment, and Arthur could swear Eames wasn’t looking at his chin.

Eames’s body is warm. Arthur hadn’t realized how close he’d moved in, but his entire forearm is pressed to Eames’s chest. He can feel Eames breathe, his chest rising evenly, but he knows that rhythm from trying it himself, trying to regulate his breathing when he felt like he couldn’t get enough oxygen into his lungs. And beneath his skin, somewhere around his wrist, he feels the faint but unmistakable rapid beating of a heart. He can’t tell if it’s Eames’s pulse, or his own.

“Good,” he says, or means to say. He’s not sure if the sound he makes could be recognized as a word. Either way, it snaps Eames out of whatever momentary lapse he was in.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles, and Arthur holds back a shiver at the rasp of his voice. He clears his throat. “Point taken. Very well, Arthur. You going to heave me up and over onto my bunk now?”

Arthur forces himself to banter back, it's what's so common between them. “As if I could. Even after all this training.”

Eames makes an affronted noise, but he still hasn’t pulled away from Arthur’s grip. Arthur’s fingers tighten reflexively in Eames’s shirt before he lets it go, takes a step back.

“You can manage,” he says.

Eames nods, but he doesn’t move. He continues to stare at Arthur until Arthur feels his face heating again, and he ducks his head, bends down and crawls into his bunk.

He’s fully, completely aware of how close Eames still is to him, to the bed. Equally aware when Eames shifts, leans his hands on the edge of the top bunk and leans down to look at Arthur. Arthur feels boxed in, trapped, and when he looks up at Eames the feeling only intensifies when he sees the strained expression on Eames’s face.

“Arthur,” he starts, but he never gets a chance to finish. The door opens just then, and Bennett and Chris come into the room, talking about their run and the check points, and Eames pulls back abruptly.

“I heard you guys finished first,” Bennett says, pulling Eames and Arthur into the conversation.

Eames doesn’t speak right away, instead goes to his duffel and pulls out his toothbrush.

“Yeah,” Arthur says. “They guys weren’t far behind though.”

“Man.” Bennett shakes his head. “I’m just glad I made it across the finish line.”

They laugh a little at that, but Eames ducks out the door, toothbrush clenched in his hand.

The rest of the guys filter into the room over the next few minutes, and then it’s lights out. Eames isn’t back yet, and it’s five more minutes before he returns. Too much time for the strict regime they’re under.

Arthur sits up a little in reaction before he can stop himself. But when he opens his mouth to whisper to Eames, Eames nods at him in the dark and jumps up into his bunk before Arthur can say a word.

Arthur stares at the underside of the top bunk for a long while, listening to Eames shift around. It isn’t until he falls silent that Arthur’s eyes can close and he falls into a fitful sleep and dreams of running, hands fisted in Eames’s shirt.

**    

The Standard Army Annual PT occurs three days later. Arthur passes with a perfect score. He feels a small sense of triumph over that, allows himself to feel that bit of pride. Eames has been quiet the past few days, but when they get their scores back he teases Arthur a little about perfectionism, and Arthur shoves at him, manages to get a smile from him, and things go mostly back to normal after that.

The day after the test, Arthur and the rest of his company pack their rucks and head out to the street combat zone. They’re starting the most intense portion of basic training, training in combat tactics from now on. They march into the woods, head into a fabricated village made of plywood huts and warehouses and barriers. There’s a short debriefing, more commands, and they attach the equipment to their M-4s that will allow them to shoot blanks.

The first run is a mess. They try to stay as a unit, but somehow the communication gets mixed up, and half the unit falls behind. There are a few men placed inside the huts they have to enter to act as the opposing forces, and when Avery, the trainee put in charge of the unit, falls as he’s hit with a blank, there’s a moment of chaos. The sound of explosions vibrates the ground, makes it hard to hear and even harder to see as dust is kicked up. Arthur recognizes his heart should be pounding, he should be terrified, but he doesn’t feel anything at that particular moment.

Avery’s second in command, Tom, is leaning against the plywood exterior of the hut, barking out a confused command. And Arthur feels anger shoot through him. He doesn’t know why. Without realizing, he’s looking around, taking stock of their position, where the gun fire is coming from, how far away the grenade explosion is, and slides into place in front of Tom.

“On my command,” he shouts. He sees the men hesitate for a moment, but then Eames is pressing himself next to Arthur, waiting for the next command as he trains his gaze on the doorway behind Arthur’s shoulder. When Arthur looks fleetingly around a corner, recognizes in a split second they’re clear, they follow him when he leads the company into movement.

They finish the drill with only one more casualty. And even though Arthur gets a good talking to about overstepping his command, the next time they run the drill he’s put into the commanding officer’s role. The men fall into place behind him after that.

They run street combat for two more days, and each time the men get better and better. When they aren’t playing the offensive, they crouch in the houses, pretend to be the opposing forces returning fire. Pretty soon, shooting blanks at the men that Arthur’s called brothers so far becomes an out of body experience. He sees men come into the house, knows if he doesn’t shoot they’ll shoot first, and detaches from himself before he pulls the trigger.

Taking the lead comes more natural, and Arthur slips into that role. Even though he becomes more detached from the people around him as they carry out missions, it makes it easier to work as a team, to see the multiple actions going on around him, assess who’s best with what weapons, who still has trouble catching their breath as they run through the mock battlefield, who hesitates as they repel down the sides of buildings. And as Arthur finds himself slipping into that role more, the guys on his team start looking to him to take the lead. They trust him, and Arthur comes to trust they’ll do their jobs as well when it really comes down to it.

The week goes by in a blur, and then night training starts. Arthur is given PVS-14s—night vision goggles that will help him see—and a PEQ-15 laser to outfit his weapon. They start on courses, press themselves into the dirt and try to squeeze themselves and their bulky packs down beneath barbed wire fences so they don’t get caught and tangled in the wire. They test fallen logs for booby traps by running their less-dominant hand over the side of the log before crawling over it. And when their drill sergeant says to line up, they take formation and head out as soon as night falls.

They’ll be spending the next few days camped out, as if it were a real mission. So Arthur and the rest of the men are carrying everything they need in their packs. When they get to the simulation battlefield, they’re taught to crawl across the length of the field. A flare goes up and Arthur freezes, waits until the light fades until he starts crawling along on his belly again. The world around him is exploding with fake grenades, machine gun fire, and Arthur keeps his body pressed close to the ground, focusing his breathing and letting his mind go blank. Instead of taking in the way his body shakes with the next explosion, he focuses on the direction of the gunfire, how many guns are sounding, what his men are doing around him.

When they get to the other side of the battlefield, they take up position and fire at targets. The night vision goggles make everything slightly blurry, so that even as Arthur sees everything nearly as bright as day, it has none of the concise details as the world usual does. He releases a breath, tries to aim his laser at the target. It appears too big, too bright, but he lets out a breath and shoots.

The shot barely makes the target. The drill sergeant in his ear is shouting orders, and Arthur blocks him out when his remarks start to turn insulting. He takes aim again, and it’s a bit easier to understand what everything means in the new night vision language. He makes the next shot, and the one after that, and when it comes time to change magazines he goes by feel alone, lets his body take over and his mind disconnect.

It works. He gets the magazine reloaded, starts shooting again, and when he’s dismissed to the next task the drill sergeant has no critiques or insults for him.

The last night they’re out in the field runs without a hitch. They make it back to their tents as the dawn light is starting to touch the horizon. They get ready for bed silently, and there’s a strange, solemn quiet about it. The last night combat signals the start of the last two weeks. After tonight, they alone will run battle scenarios, be in charge of the commands, and then there’s only a week after that until basic training is over.

Arthur lies in his bedroll, staring up at the roof of the tent. The explosions of the battlefield still vibrate through his body, and he goes through that night’s run, tucking away vital information about his teammates he picked up, memorizing what the moves were for different scenarios, what that meant for enemy fire.

“Arthur.”

Eames’s voice comes to him through the mostly-dark. He and Eames are sharing a tent with another battle buddy team, Cody and Harris. But they’re out on watch duty, leaving him and Eames alone.

“You were brilliant out there.”

That makes Arthur frown. “What?” It’s an odd statement coming from Eames. Coming from any of the guys, really. They’re all expected to do their job, excel, that’s it. No praise, no recognition, except in helping their brothers along in each exercise, making sure they all get across the finish line together. The army, Arthur is pretty sure, invented the phrase “There is no ‘I’ in ‘team.’”

“I’m serious,” Eames says. “I heard McGrath talking with Rhodes.” They’re the two leading officers on the night runs. “They were talking about you.”

Arthur’s heart slams into his chest. He sits up, supporting his weight on his elbows, and looks over at Eames. He’s lying on his stomach, supporting his chin on his folded arms, and Arthur can just make out his features in the pre-dawn gray filtering through the tent.

“How the hell did you hear them talking?” It shouldn’t be the first thing Arthur asks, but it’s what his mind focuses on at the moment.

Eames smirks. “I have my ways.”

Arthur huffs. “Yeah. I’m sure.” But Eames does. Eames knows most of the men by name, they know him by name, and Arthur’s seen him go from cocky and hilarious to quiet and attentive in the span of just a few minutes, depending on who he’s dealing with. He’s pretty sure he’s the only one who’s seen Eames be all those things, but sometimes even he isn’t sure of that. Eames is whoever he’s talking to needs him to be.

“What…” Arthur hesitates. He doesn’t want to seem overeager, but hearing that the drill sergeants were talking about him makes him nervous, on edge. “Why? What were they saying.”

Eames grins. “They think you’re one of the more promising of the bunch, Arthur.”

Arthur pauses for a moment before saying, deadpan, “They would never say that.” 

Eames shrugs and rolls over onto his side. “They said as much. They didn’t need to spell it out word for word for me to understand what they were talking about.”

Arthur makes a sound at that. He looks away, his mind buzzing. He never expected to excel at basic training. He figured he might be pretty good, but not good enough to get any notice. And when basic training was over he could pick what specialty he went into, maybe pick a quieter vocation, stay under the radar until he dedicated enough time and made enough money to pay off his loans and then earn a little more to gather up some savings until he found a job. But if the drill sergeants were taking notice of him, that meant something completely different.

Silence stretches out between them for a long few minutes, and Eames allows him the time to process.

“What were you going to go into?” Arthur doesn’t know where the question comes from. Just that it’s suddenly on his tongue, out in the open, and he’s looking at Eames, trying to keep his gaze focused.

Eames sits up, faces Arthur. “Didn’t really think that far ahead.”

Arthur stares at him a long moment. He’s not telling the complete truth. “You didn’t just join on a whim,” he finally says.

Eames shrugs. He looks at Arthur and Arthur knows he’s waiting for him to continue, to lead them away from this conversation. But Arthur turns and squares his body to Eames, feels their knees knock together. And he waits.

When Eames finally speaks, his words come out quiet, as if he’s never said them aloud or wished to. “The RAF pilots were always pretty cool.”

“Eames. That’s the Royal Air Force. Wrong country. And if you wanted to join the air force you shouldn’t have come to Army basic training.” It’s not an impossibility to switch, but no one goes about it that way.

Eames shrugs. “Didn’t have much of a choice.”

“Why?” Arthur’s pushing, knows he’s pushing. But Eames isn’t looking at him again, and Eames has become even more subdued the past few days. And Arthur wants to know _something_.

“My parents,” Eames starts. He pauses before continuing. “We lived in England for a bunch of years, I ran with a crowd… they weren’t too happy. So we moved back here. I ran with another crowd. Got into some trouble. Nothing big. But it was either come here or head out to the streets.”

“Your parents…”

Eames shrugs. “We were never really close anyway. And I have a younger brother they can bequeath their fortunes to if, when, this doesn't meet their standards.”

Arthur nods. He watches as Eames stares at the tent behind Arthur’s head. Waits until Eames looks at him again.

“You still could have joined the air force.”

“Nah. Not one of the options.” He clears his throat then, and a small smile curves his lips. “But that’s behind us now. I get to run with the grunts on the ground.”

Arthur shakes his head, shoves his knee into Eames’s.

“Sorry,” he says, feeling a little awkward for saying it.

“What for. I got to meet your lovely acquaintance after all.” He throws Arthur a  grin then, and Arthur allows himself to recognize it as charming. “And the rest of the wankers here.”

“You mean brothers,” Arthur says, mock serious.

Eames laughs. “You mean pains in the arse.”

“Same thing.”

“Quite.” Eames is smiling easy again, and Arthur feels lighter somehow at that. It’s brighter in the tent now, and Arthur can see Eames’s features, see when he drops his gaze to Arthur’s knees.

“I’m going to bed,” he says. “So get off my bedroll.”

Arthur looks down to where he’s sitting on Eames’s blankets.

“You’ve been lounging on my bed all these weeks, and you’re not going to let me have a few moments of sitting on the edge of yours?”

“Arthur.” Eames practically purrs his name. “If I’d known you wanted in my bed, I would have let in you months ago.”

Arthur feels his face go hot.

“Smooth,” he deadpans, and sits back to get back under his blankets again.

“I was only joking,” Eames says, half apologetic.

“You’re always joking,” Arthur replies. He doesn’t mean anything by it, isn’t even angry. But his words come out sullen, subdued, and he’s embarrassed right away by them.

“Not always,” Eames counters. And Arthur feels him move next to him. He rolls a bit, looks over his shoulder, and sees Eames has shuffled closer. So close that Arthur can almost feel the heat of him at his back.

“I know.”

Eames nods. Doesn’t take his gaze off him for a long moment.

“Where are you going after this?” He asks it in a tone Arthur’s never heard before. It’s serious, and solemn, and Arthur turns on his back to look at him fully.

“Don’t know. They… if you heard right, they might want to send me somewhere.”

Eames nods thoughtfully.

“They’ll probably ship you off to North Carolina or Arizona. They have some intelligence AIT out there. Brains as well as brawn.”

Arthur shrugs. He doesn’t know what to say to that. Hadn’t ever thought about that part of it before.

“Doesn’t sound like a bad deal,” Eames says. His tone is light, thoughtful, and he sits back to get under his own blankets.

“Does that mean you’ll be applying for that branch too?” Arthur means it as a joke, and it comes out that way for once.

But when Eames replies, “Maybe,” that doesn’t sound like a joke at all.

**

Eames is right. Over the next week, the drill sergeants push Arthur to the extreme. He’s placed in the lead commanding position most of the time. The battle scenarios are loud and full of fake casualties. And Arthur finds something in himself that answers to that challenge. His mind focuses, even with multiple explosions around him, and his men falter and look to him for directions. Arthur answers and leads them. Eames turns out to be a brutal soldier, dead on target and not hesitant when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. He zeros in, focuses, and Arthur understands that part in them both.

At the end of the next week, when recovery week has begun and there are only four more days until the graduation ceremony, Arthur is approached by Sergeant McGrath and several other drill sergeants. They tell him they’d like him to go to North Carolina, to the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School. He’ll further his training as a soldier, but be given the opportunity to enter into the intelligence field and special ops. Arthur could say no, but it wouldn’t really make a difference. So he nods, thanks them for the honor, and signs the forms they have already filled out for him.

He finds Eames that night, taking inventory of his possessions and making a mess of Arthur’s bed in the process.

“You were right,” he says.

Eames looks up. Takes in Arthur’s stance, the way his fists are hanging carefully loose at his sides. He nods, and doesn’t say a thing.

Arthur doesn’t know what Eames applies for, but the next day Arthur comes back to their dorm during recreation hour and finds Eames tucked into his own bunk for once, sprawled out across his mattress.

“Oklahoma,” is all Eames says. It’s the Field Artillery Center. He’ll continue his training as a soldier with weapons specialty, and in within a year most likely be deployed.

Arthur feels a tightness start in his throat. He tries to ignore it, tamp it down like all the other experiences he’s been through so far at basic training. Or, most of them. He looks at Eames’s bed, notes the rumpled sheets, the socks piled up at the end of the bed.

“It stinks up here,” he mutters. And without warning he stuffs his hand under Eames’s pillow, searching as Eames grunts and finally breaks his gaze away from the ceiling to see what he’s doing. Arthur pulls out the deck of cards, fists his hand into Eames’s shirt one more time, and tugs.

“Come on,” he says, and barely gives Eames any time to get his feet under him. They end up wedged in Arthur’s bunk, playing poker until the lights go off.

**

Honor Mountain is the last task they have before them. They completed the Bayonet the previous night, a full night’s hike up the largest mountain in the area with thirty-five pound rucks on their backs, water canteens to carry, and stretchers weighed down to mimic the weight of real fallen soldiers to carry between them. Even with stretching, Arthur aches the next day.

But all their supplies are repaired, the barracks cleaned, supplies accounted for. Honor Hill is the last night before the graduation ceremony. It’s a mystery as to what actually happens there, even though Arthur’s known about this night since the first week of basic training.

They hike up yet another hill. Behind a wrought iron gate that spells out parts of the Army’s creed in swooping metal letters, there’s a large bonfire and torches leading the way.

The men line up in rows, and when McGrath starts commending them on their actions, on all that they’ve done and all that they will continue to do, Arthur feels as if something is finally coming to a sense of finality. Tomorrow is the graduation ceremony, and the day after that he’ll be on a bus to North Carolina. AIT training will begin, and Arthur will begin the next leg of the journey.

The speeches continue, more torches are lit, oaths are taken, and a chant is picked up by the soldiers around him. Because they _are_ soldiers now, members of the infantry each and every one of them. Arthur picks up the chant, shouts as loud as any of them, and when the chants dissolve into cheers he’s smiling like everybody else around him. There’s the crush bodies, brothers in arms, and he lets himself forget about tomorrow and the day after that as the flames of the bonfire kick higher into the night sky.

“Hooah!” The sound is loud and rough in his ear, and Arthur turns, already prepared, and locks Eames in a headlock. Arthur feels light, as if nothing that really happens tonight will affect or be affected by anything that came before or anything that will come after. So he takes Eames in a headlock, laughs as Eames tries to squirm out, and relents when he feels the rapid tapout on his shoulder.

Eames is quick, one of the fastest infantrymen gathered around the fire, so it doesn’t take a lot for him to get the jump on Arthur and lock his arms around his chest in a hold. And Arthur lets him, sees a grin on Eames’s face when he gets a quick glimpse. So he lets Eames get the upper hand, maneuver him to the edge of the crowd where their tussling won’t disrupt anyone, and when Eames’s hold starts to go slack, he pushes his weight back into Eames’s body, warm along the entire length of his back.

Eames holds still then, and Arthur’s breath comes hard from the short tussle and the cheering, and they watch the flames reach higher. Eames’s palm is warm on his chest, and for a fleeting moment he feels hot breath on the back of his neck, something soft brush there. And Arthur’s entire body feels as if he’s standing in front of the overwhelming heat of the fire.

Eames releases him shortly after. When they face each other, Arthur sees the Eames he saw that first day staring back at him, a smirk on his face and eyes flittering around the crowd, not quite focusing on anything in particular, until they land back on Arthur. Arthur feels breathless.

“Good show,” Eames finally says. His smile is softer, private, and Arthur aches in a way he hopes he forgets after this.

“Yeah.”

**Author's Note:**

> I, of course, had to find help with learning about basic training, the military, etc. And so these videos helped a lot: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA19EA5BF55E71465


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